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Interzone # 206 - October 2006
01/11/2006 . Source: Rod MacDonald 
Bi-monthly magazine: UK publisher/editor address: Andy Cox, TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambridgeshire CB6 2LB. Price: £ 3.50 (UK) $ 6.00(US). ISSN: 0264-3596. Buy Interzone in the USA - or Buy Interzone in the UK  check out website: www.ttapress.com
Before commencing with the magazine, it's worth mentioning that on the TTA web site an announcement appears stating that a new website is on its way. We have been looking for this for some time! We've also been looking for the new magazine, 'Black Static', but as yet nothing is forthcoming. We can only wait in anticipation of the wondrous things that will come our way but hurry up, TTA, before the slow handclap begins.
Fahrija Velic's work has appeared on 'Interzone's cover before. This time we are presented with the image of a giant robotic creature stamping its way through a city. Is this a model city and a medium-size robot or a conventional city with a huge robot? What is the motivation behind this work? I would like to find out more but the artist's website was difficult to access, as was the case when I tried it last year, so I'm none the wiser.
On to the fiction. I was a bit perplexed when first reading 'The Beekeeper' by Jamie Barras. Despite some excellent imagery associated with this story, I thought we were in for a tedious ride through nonsensical claptrap but I was wrong. A certain amount of concentration takes you into an alien world far removed from our own and yet inextricably linked to it in some way.
The people in the story are not human. Rather, they are some esoteric off-shoot of our gene base living in a galaxy that has already been colonised, probably several times already. The other beings they encounter on a strange world are the results of an old genetic experiment and, as the story progresses, we discover more about both species. This is an interesting journey.
Chris Beckett gives us 'Karel's Prayer' which is all about a clone who is mistaken for the real thing or so he thinks. Secret agent psychologists are trying to extract information from him about fundamentalist Christian terrorists out to blow up scientists doing work against God.
While this is a good enough story, clones being grown out of vats is a bit old hat. Maybe the author had fundamentalist Christian anti-abortionists in mind but this wouldn't make a Science Fiction story.
What else? Robert Davies, in a way, gives us the complete history of mankind through a couple of pages of condensed text. 'The Ship' is rather an old-fashioned story which I didn't think I would see in the pages of 'Interzone'. Despite that, I rather liked it and think this is something the editors can do in the future without the risk of alienating the modern purists. After all, a couple of pages out of the vast size of the magazine doesn't represent that much.
Apart from this, there was another story about clones and another one about Chinese. One day we will have a story about Chinese clones but with a population expansion problem (as mentioned in the story) I can't see the Chinese government investing much in clone technology at the moment.
'Interzone' continues its high standard with this issue. This must now be a much sought after magazine and its progress into the future seems assured for some time to come.
Rod MacDonald
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